Thursday, November 26, 2015

A Collective of the Fearless

It is a common thing to chance upon advocacy
and lobbying initiatives that tell you what not to do: Don’t Rape. Don’t encourage violence. Don’t pollute. Don’t kill. As
well founded and well meaning as these initiatives undoubtedly are, they fall
short of accomplishing what they set out to, often, simply because of the
negative tone of the underlying message. Rather than to negate, why not affirm
a positive stance? Shilo Shiv Suleman’s work, thought process and approach to
advocacy has followed this grain. Speaking to us about her work at The Fearless Collective, Shilo shares
her thought on art and advocacy.

I am an artist, a
storyteller and an illustrator. When I was around 12 or 13, when people would
ask me to introduce myself, I would always say I was an artist – I was so sure
of it. However, with time, the gradient differed. I worked as an illustrator
for children’s books when I was 16, and then did a lot of set design,
illustrations and worked with technology and different media, and now, I run
the Fearless Collective. I think the three things that have stood out for me in
this journey so far has been the magical realism, the fact that it is all about
art and everything is an art form, and finally, that I keep away from
conventional canvasses, and look at different places to take art out to.

I suppose the
subliminal understanding that motivates the Fearless Collective has remained,
having manifested in the form of different prototypes before it evolved in its
current form. I was involved in causes for a long time – right from when I was
18, where I was in college and indulged in activism. I was part of this
initiative called Artivism, which did graphic design on a pro bono basis for
NGOs. I designed posters for the Pink Chaddi campaign, and it became the first
viral online campaign in India. It was a simple poster I did in 15 minutes, and
the next thing I know, there were thousands of shares, and Hindu
fundamentalists were chasing me. It made me realise that something as simple as
a poster can do a lot. In 2012, I was in Delhi for a friend’s wedding, when the
gang rape happened. All of us went to India Gate to protest, and the surge of
energy was inspiring. I wanted to be on top of things and contribute to the
movement, like everyone else.

What I noticed at that
time was the continued subtext of fear. There was constant fear-mongering, and
fear was a part of rhetoric almost everywhere. Things like - get home safe,
I’ll drop you, or stay for the night instead of heading back – they just drove
home the truth that one couldn’t be out there, and be safe. India needs more
people coming out, India needs more people venturing onto its streets. I
created a poster as an affirmation to myself – reading “Not asking for it”.
That’s how it began. It is a completely open access campaign, and people can
download the posters and put it up anywhere in their cities.

It was then that I
realised that the online element may work well – but one really does need to
focus on public spaces. That paved the way for our current work – where we do
participative storytelling in public places. We work with people in public
spaces, take over with their stories, and tell them as beautiful, positive stories.

We had an interesting
collaboration in Okhla, Delhi, with Safecity and the Naz Foundation. It was a
powerful campaign – Safecity maps areas in cities where people feel unsafe.
They’d picked out this one road in Okhla – a particularly dark alleyway, which
was perceived as unsafe. We painted the walls, with eyes all over it, and wrote
in Hindi, what translated to mean “look at me with your heart, not with your
eyes”. The idea was to take an affirmative response, rather than negativity. We
had the local kids join us and paint the wall, as well. At first, people stared
at us as we painted, and then slowly, when they came up and saw these eyes
glaring gat them, they realised the significance of what we’d done. Now, girls
feel safer. It was amazing to do this in collaboration with the people
themselves – just putting a part of yourself in the form of a permanent mark
out there in a public space can create a huge personal impact.

Currently, we’ve got a
series of episodes on YouTube chronicling these experiences. We just shared one
on our time in Dharavi. We had a day long workshop with
the people there. We work with people in intervention using art therapy or
theatre, and always do this as an interdisciplinary exercise. The idea was to
look at personal boundaries and how we create it. We came up with affirmations
together – we never paint walls without understanding the community we work
with!

A lot of times, when
we do this, we find ourselves with encouragement. But sometimes, people do come
to pick fights – but even that is not something we feel defeated by, because
these fights invariably pave the way for dialogue.